Page 15 - HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing

RUST, MOORMAN, AND BHALLA

that life event by offering special Membership Rewards on pur-
chases from merchants in its network in the home-furnishings retail
category.
One insurance and financial services company we know of also
proved adept at tailoring products to customers’ life events. Cus-
tomers who lose a spouse, for example, are flagged for special atten-
tion from a team that offers them customized products. When a
checking account or credit-card customer gets married, she’s a good
cross-selling prospect for an auto or home insurance policy and a
mortgage. Likewise, the firm targets new empty nesters with home
equity loans or investment products and offers renter’s insurance to
graduating seniors.

Reinventing Marketing

These shining examples aside, boards and C-suites still mostly pay
lip service to customer relationships while focusing intently on
selling goods and services. Directors and management need to
spearhead the strategy shift from transactions to relationships and
create the culture, structure, and incentives necessary to execute
the strategy.
What does a customer-cultivating organization look like? Al-
though no company has a fully realized customer-focused structure,
we can see the features of one in a variety of companies making the
transition. The most dramatic change will be the marketing depart-
ment’s reinvention as a “customer department.” The first order of
business is to replace the traditional CMO with a new type of leader—
a chief customer officer.

The CCO
Chief customer officers are increasingly common in companies
worldwide—there are more than 300 today, up from 30 in 2003.
Companies as diverse as Chrysler, Hershey’s, Oracle, Samsung,
Sears, United Airlines, Sun Microsystems, and Wachovia now have
CCOs. But too often the CCO is merely trying to make a conventional
organization more customer-centric. In general, it’s a poorly defined

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